Let our museums teach, not preach

Dr John Carroll, one of the people appointed to cast a critical eye over the National Museum in Canberra, says that the national War Memorial is one of the "world's great museums".

The War Memorial is, indeed, a great museum. And it doesn't take long to figure out what makes it special.

First, the collection of objects, pictures and dioramas is a three-dimensional record of Australian involvement in the great conflicts of the 20th century. A good museum, it goes without saying, has a good collection.

But, more importantly, the War Memorial museum does not editorialise; it treats its visitors as individuals with prejudices of their own, which will be informed, illuminated or challenged by what they see with their eyes.

As a pacifist, I find the collection profoundly moving, particularly the sections devoted to the Great War, when young men wrote touching letters to their parents, wives and girlfriends and we know that they were but hours from death.");document.write("

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A visitor who revels in military glory will read the collection in a completely different way and will have his belief in the glory of war confirmed by torn flags and beautiful military aircraft. There are no labels directing us in how we should think. We are not told that what we are seeing is a memorial to patriotism or a reminder of the horrors of war. It just is. Make of it what you will.

I have seen a few museums here and there. The Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space in Washington is a massive tribute to American inventiveness, audacity and bellicosity. There are no labels to tell you this - you work it out for yourself.

Some parts of Stockholm's Vasa collection have been on display at Melbourne Museum recently. When we look at the relics of the ship that toppled over and sank under the weight of its preposterous armaments we do not need words to remind us that King Gustavus Adolphus suffered from a bad case of imperial hubris. Just look at the stuff and his problem is obvious. And we also learn something about the craftsmanship of Swedish artisans of the 17th century.

One of the most poignant museums I have ever visited, and which we might look to as a model for exhibiting the relics of the melancholy contact of white and black on this continent, is in a dark, satanic mill near Manchester. Part of this cotton spinning and weaving plant, built at the beginning of the industrial revolution, has been restored to working order. Visitors have a three-dimensional, functioning reminder of the maltreatment of children in these dreadful places. Mind you, nowhere in the labels on the exhibits does it say that this was ever a dreadful place or that here we see atfirst hand the cruelty of unrestrained capitalism. There are no Marxist interpretations of the work practices at the plant, where children who were lucky enough not to be crushed to death under the thrashing looms would live short and miserable lives with their bodies distorted by rickets caused by malnourishment and enforced unnatural posture.

On the wall, the record from Hansard of the parliamentary inquiry into the effects of child labour confirms my anti-capitalist prejudices. No doubt Margaret Thatcher sees the place as a shrine to a golden age of labour relations in Britain.

Museums are not sermons or propaganda. They are a record. When I stand in the British Museum and look at Robert Falcon Scott's diary, opened to its last sad page, I do not want anyone at that point to tell me if this is the diary of a hero of the empire or a reckless, arrogant fool. I want to try to imagine the last moments when he wrote, "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more". At that moment, the object is everything and it must speak for itself. No preaching, please.